Shell Games

A Town Where Things Besides People Live

2012-01-24T15:20:00.000-06:00

TURTLE TUESDAY

Some of you may know about a little Japanese Role-Playing Game called Yuuyake Koyake. Or maybe you know it by its English moniker, Golden Sky Stories. If you don’t, somewhere, someone referred to it as the Totoro RPG, and it’s not the worst description. The game is not about adventure in the traditional gaming sense. There’s no dragons to be bested, no empires to overturn. Instead, the game is about the little adventures, the day-to-day trials of regular people doing more or less regular things in a small, rural Japanese town. But you are not one of these people. This is a town where things besides people live. You are a henge, an animal spirit, and at your disposal is a little bit of magic. Not much, but enough to help the people of this town.

After reading that, you may already realize Golden Sky Stories is a different kind of game. There's no dice, no statistics in the traditional sense, and not even a chapter on combat. It truly is “heart-warming role-playing,” a kind of experience where you’re more likely to help a boy overcome his fear of the haunted house at the end of town than stomp goblins.

The setting and focus are not Stories’ only charm. The illustrations throughout are captivating, cute to the point of endangering bicuspids everywhere, and go a long way to setting the mood. Of course, deciphering the moonspeak of the original Japanese book is an endeavor most of us aren’t equipped to do.

Luckily for you and me, Ewen Cluney, along with the other half of Starline Publishing, Mike Stevens, translated this special game and will be bringing it to Western readers soon enough. I’ve had the opportunity to read Ewen’s top-secret (well, okay, not-so-secret) English manuscript for Golden Sky Stories, and it’s a real joy. But that shouldn't be any surprise — This isn’t Ewen’s first rodeo after all. But the text is only a part of the job. Someone has to take this text and give it a home in the pages of a book once again. That someone, as it turns out, is me!

It’s a great privilege to take part in bringing this game to life, and I look forward to sharing with you all my progress. Be sure to check by for further updates, and of course follow Ewen's blog and the Starline Publishing website for all the latest news about Golden Sky Stories.

...Oh? Why is this an entry for Turtle Tuesday? Throughout the book, you’ll meet a cast of lovable characters, including Elder Turtle. Here he is patiently listening to Riko, the tanuki henge, as she frets over some dilemma.

Far-Off Promise

2012-01-20T21:30:00.000-06:00

A new year lay ahead, and the promise of a new set of days inspires the best intentions. The world echoes with countless commitments to work harder, be healthier, to care for each other, and to change in ways we hadn’t the year before. The sentiments are as often enough as vague as they are well-intentioned, the sort of positive thinking that we can stretch and contract to the size we can make room for.

But I want to do more than that this year. I want a game plan, as much for myself as for the accountability saying it outright provides. That’s not to say 2011 was empty of accomplishments. After all, I helped Minion Games ready no less than six games for sale in a single year -- no mean feat! And I took part in a graphical overhaul for DriveThruRPG and its sister sites that will be rolling out soon. Yet, for 2012, I want to get my things done.

So, here it is, my plan for the year. (Split up for your convenience and mine.)

My Blog
I’ve been moving to a new computer, an iMac, for the past month or two — the lengthy travails of which I'll have to detail one or these days — but I fully intend to get this blog back on track. Besides my usual excursions of fancy, I'm launching several bi-weekly columns.

You’ve seen a taste of the first one with the Digital Gameboard. I’ll be making a point of covering all the gaming apps I come across, especially those involving euro-style board games and their kin. I stand by that the iPad is a great platform for classic board gaming fun and can use all the coverage it can get.

I’ll also be penning my foolhardy quest to play every console rpg ever. It's something that’s become ever more difficult as my list of unplayed and unfinished games grows longer. But maybe by adding you all to my party, this quest may become less of a foolhardy one.

And for those of you wondering, yes Minion Monday will eventually finish out its run. I’m waiting on my own physical copies of the games so I can better show off the components. It’s just taking a little longer than expected.

My Games
While there’s a certain anime-inspired elephant in the room, I have up my sleeves a plethora of games I've tinkered on in perpetuity, and I’d really like to finally get some of them out the metaphorical door and into the light. While finishing, much less releasing, all of them in this revolution of the sun is a unlikely accomplishment, I do want progress, and I want to share that progress with you. Here's a highlight reel of what to expect.

OVA — Yes, the oft-promised return of Wise Turtle's flagship product is still very much in the works, and I’ve made a commitment to its release in the early half of 2012. Long-time fans may have dim memories of several supplements that I hope to talk more about and bring closer to release. You can see a sample of artwork for a sci-fi-themed supplement on the left of the header, done by feguimel.

Legendary! — While I love all my work for Minion Games, and all its games are special to me, they’re still not mine in any true sense of the word. Legendary! is a fantasy dungeon-crawl of a board game inspired by fond childhood memories of Dungeon, but with enough twists to the formula that I believe in its ability to give something new to a crowded and often trite set of games. It’s infused with lore from a lifetime of love for console rpgs, and the very talented Honoel Ibardolaza certainly brings it to life. That trio of numbskulls in the header is his handiwork.

Last Legend — Before OVA, I was a devoted follower (and sometimes contributor) to the Returner Final Fantasy RPG, an attempt to capture the spirit of the eponymous video games in pen and paper form. Eventually I left that community over a difference of opinion...whereas most were concerned with copying the actual game mechanics and number crunching of the video games, I felt the rules would be better served trying to approximate the feel of rpg battles and leave the math for the CPUs that spawned it. Last Legend is my on again, off again take on the subject. You can see some art from it in the header, this time the inks in the background that are once again provided by Honoel.

iOS — Tied in with all these is a general interest in the iOS platform. Now that I have an iMac (more about that in a future post), exploring the world of iPads and iPhones is a real possibility. While the likelihood of me gaining enough prowess with programming to create a game of any decent measure is not good, having access to the tools does open other interesting opportunities. OVA-dedicated apps to aid with dice-rolling, character creation, and even easy rules reference would be a great resource to provide players, and iOS versions of the various Minion Games would be cool indeed.

My work for others
While I said I wanted to make 2012 a year for my projects, there is at least one outside job I'm really excited about. If you follow Ewen Cluney's blog, you may already know what I mean. If not...well, be sure to check by Tuesday for my own official announcement!

Pedal to the Metal

2011-11-14T14:09:00.010-06:00

MINION MONDAY

Nitro Dice provided an interesting series of turns for me at Minion Games. It would mark the first time James, resident head-honcho at our little company, delegated the art production outside of our previous Chuck & Clay tag-team. Minion had a ambitious amount of games to publish in 2011, so it was reasonable enough to hire some outside labor to assist driving a few of the graphical vehicles. As it turned out, that didn’t pan out as well as it could have. I ended up having to draw the streets and dastardly hazards — originally the artist’s job — and design the box, tokens, player cards, and card backs — the intended domain of a hired graphic designer. So a decision intended to reduce my workload ended up making me wear twice as many hats...or racing helmets.

Stunts had such realistic graphics!

But that was okay. That’s because there’s something about racing that excites the 10-year-old in me, the kid who’d spend hours playing computer sims like Stunts and Car & Driver, collect hundreds of matchbox cars, and memorize the top speed of the Ferrari Testarossa. (It’s 183 MPH, in case you’re wondering.) Even though the die-cast cars are long put away, and I haven’t bought an honest racing sim since the original Gran Turismo, every blackened skid mark and crack in a curb was rendered with as much love as I could muster.

Even without the theme, Nitro Dice is a pretty unique game. The “Dice” moniker aside, it’s a card game at heart, with the dice themselves only representing your car and its current speed. To navigate the streets without incurring damage, you have to play an identical card from your hand. You can also replace cards on the track with ones containing hazards, dangerous obstacles that can damage and slow down your opponents. Careful placement and hand management are the key to winning!

Once again we went for the double-cut. Since the racing track itself is made from cards, it was imperative to present a cohesive track to race on. Forcing players to speed bump over a black or white border between each card would be a terrible shame, not to mention would rob the dice of space to breathe. I also had to make sure the turns matched seamlessly when you placed cards together.

If you’d like a more in depth overview of the game, try this review. And as always, if you’re interested in purchasing the game, please do some from our store at Minion Games.

A Matter of Grave Importance

2011-10-31T00:00:00.003-05:00

MINION MONDAY
Zombies are everywhere. Zombies and horticulture, zombies and islands, zombies and domesticated French canines...

I hate to out myself as part of the infinitesimally small demographic that just doesn’t like them, but — well — I don’t. But I do adore All Hallow's Eve. If you think about it, Halloween is as close to a holiday for gamers and anime fans as there will likely ever be. It’s accepted, nay, encouraged to dress up as your favorite personages from fantasy literature and films, then frolic the evening away. It’s a night of pretend in its purest, unabashed form.

So for all that, I think I can let my distaste for the shambling undead slide this day of the year in the spirit of all things spooky. Besides, this is the perfect Minion Monday to talk to you about Grave Business.

Grave Business is a game of strategic bidding. Send forth your zombies to loot graves for valuables, and while you’re at it, gather new body parts to make more zombies to dig for more treasure. It’s a clever use of theme, with enough thinking to be fun without ever taking itself too seriously.

Chuck Whelon, an artist we've had the pleasure of working with in the past, including Nile and its re-release Nile DeLuxor, colors the game with personality. His work is so big and bold that it really didn’t warrant a lot of graphic-design hoo-hah, but I’m inordinately proud of the game's logo.

If you’d like a more in depth overview of the game, you can check out The Dice Tower's video or take a trip over to Cartrunk for a phantasmally phantastic pheature.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CARTRUNK.NET. SKULL NOT INCLUDED!

Thy Kingdom of Solomon Come

2011-10-24T19:40:00.008-05:00

MINION MONDAY
I was going to approach this Minion Monday thing with some semblance of the chronological order the games were made, but after addressing card production with Nile, I think it’s worth staying on topic. Last week I said there were two ways to go about card sheets. With Kingdom of Solomon, though, I developed a third method, one that combines the aesthetics of the double cut with the economy of the solid border.

As you can see, the Kingdom of Solomon Building Cards have art right up to the edge. That normally requires using bleed and the expensive double cut — that is, unless every edge matches seamlessly with its neighbor. As long as that is so, for all intents and purposes it performs the same as a solid border. Shift it up, left, or right, there will never be anything glaringly obvious on the final card. The principle is similar to creating “tiled” backgrounds for webpages and desktop backgrounds. If you ever tried such a feat, you understand it can be a troublesome undertaking. The simplest approach is to make edges mirror images of one another, though quite a bit of tinkering is warranted if you don't want your final cards looking some kind of textural kaleidoscope.

This approach also has another pitfall, and that is you need bleed for it to work.

“Bleed‽” you cry in dismay, having long searched your emotions for a proper use of an interrobang, “But you said you could do this with a single cut!”

This is true. But sadly the sheet of cards you’re creating is not an infinite plane. There will be cards that have no neighbor when you reach the outskirts of the sheet. With the solid border method, this is a simple exercise in using the paintbucket, but here you will have to once again revisit a proper seamless edge. It’s a bit of extra effort, but it can really make a card design shine without breaking the bank.

Kingdom of Solomon itself is not a card game, but a worker-placement game where you manage resources and show up your fellow players in the eyes of King Solomon. The Kickstarter video surmises the gameplay in as good a way as I can imagine. If this sounds up your alley, you can preorder now at Minion Games and get a special bonus Building Card not in store-bought versions. With the game arriving in a matter of weeks, there's no time like the present!

It's Not Just a River In Egypt

2011-10-17T08:37:00.005-05:00

MINION MONDAY

For the better part of the last year, I’ve been pouring much of my creative energy into work for Minion Games. Six games later, I’m finally done for the year. While I can't say I’ll exactly miss the overnight deadlines, constant revisions, and counting pixels, I find myself a little lost without the nagging Minion at my side. I’ve been on board with this board game company since its inception in late 2009, and there was always a game to work on, a convention to make. Now that there isn’t, the ability to breathe is welcome but alien, too.

Of course, the upshot of this new free time is I can actually spare a moment to share my toils with you. Welcome to Minion Monday!

Nile was one of our first games — and our earliest success. But our original printer, an outfit from China, provided a product with chitzy cards, fragile boxes, and, in the worst cases, thoroughly damp product. With our 2011 wave of games, we switched to Ludo Fact, a German printer. The price involved was considerably more, but the end result was worth the investment. Nile DeLuxor takes advantage of this better production and includes the all new Monuments expansion and additional crop types to support more players.

Since it’s a re-release of an old game, most of the work was repurposing old art to fit the new bigger box (and boy it’s great to hold!) and expanding the manual with new rules and much-needed graphical examples. But working on it reminded me of an important lesson we learned the first time around.

When cards are produced, they are initially printed out on a huge sheet. This over-sized poster is then cut into the familiar round-cornered rectangles we know and love. By nature of this process, the printed artwork may not perfectly line up with the dies, the metal blades that cut the shapes. The result is the top image on the right. See how the Papyrus’ red is visible on the Wheat card?

There are two ways to get around this. What you’ll see most of the time is a solid-colored border all the way around the card, like in Magic: The Gathering and many other collectable card games. When the graphic gets shifted, it’s not nearly as noticeable.

The option we opted for was the double-cut method. Extra art, or “bleed,” extends from all sides. Instead of a single cut separating cards, an additional cut is made. The excess is discarded, and you have a card that will appear correct no matter which way the art shifts with no visible border. Looks nice, right?

Now here’s where the “lesson” comes in. It costs much, much more to cut cards this way! We did decide to keep the double-cut look for Nile DeLuxor, but it’s an expense any of you aspiring game-makers out there should keep in mind.

As for game itself, I could go into detail about its rules, strategy, and agricultural antics, but the fellow at Drake's Forge does a much more entertaining job of it. He’s right. If Nile is remotely historically accurate, it positively sucks to be a farmer in ancient Egypt.

If you’re interested in purchasing the game, please do so from our website, Minion Games. More of your hard-earned money goes to the hard-working people who make these games!

BAKKHUS

2011-08-31T20:29:00.003-05:00

Bakkhus was a long time coming. Despite having the basics of the game thought out way back in April, it took this long for me to put all the pieces together. This game is my entry in Daniel Solis' Thousand Year Game contest, and it looks to have some tough competition!

Bakkhus itself is an abstract tile-matching game for two players...with a twist: Every tile has two sides, and the opposite side can lead to even more matches! It's the sort of idea that springs from your head — like the goddess Athena! — when you play one too many "Puzzle" video games.

The game is available in two files:

The Pieces
The Rules

Feel free to try it out with your friends (and leave a comment or two!)

A Font of Wisdom

2011-08-30T22:27:00.008-05:00

TYPOGRAPHY TUESDAY
If you have an even passing interest in exploring typography, it soon becomes apparent what a vast world of typefaces are out there. Serif and san serif, text and display, humanist and neoclassical, standard and pro! Even when such things had to be struck in metal and assembled by hand, it was an expansive landscape. Now with computers to streamline their production and the Internet to share them in countless ways, it’s less a landscape than a veritable universe of ascenders, apertures, and x-heights. Navigating between them in any meaningful way is usually more an exercise in happenstance than design.

But if you're carrying an iPad in your travels, you have access to a stalwart ally. FontBook, from the folks behind FontShop.com, features an immense, if not quite exhaustive, collection of typefaces. While the icon for the app is a disappointing effort, it belies a really imaginative and eye-catching layout. Every page is subdivided into neighborly blocks. The gridded layout is always captivating to navigate, with larger blocks indicating larger number of sub-items in that heading. At your command, the extensive catalog of fonts can organize themselves by name, foundry, year, or style. Once you've found the one you're looking for, you can add it to your favorites or click the handy link to purchase it from, where else, Fontshop.com.

While just wending your way here and there, seeing what typographic finds foster your fancy, is certainly a good a use of the program as any, I've found it immensely useful for finding specific typefaces. Narrow it down to a specific style and flick your way through the thumbnails. A sample “Rg” is displayed for every typeface, and it's amazing how useful that letter combination is for getting the essence of a font. FontBook has been an invaluable resource while designing the latest worker-placement game, The Manhattan Project, from Minion Games. It's themed after World War II propaganda posters, and the typography is an immense part of the spirit.

The app requires an internet connection to get all “620,000 typeface specimens,” though it contains half a gig of samples of the most popular faces for offline use. As of this writing, FontBook is available on the iPad App Store for $5.99

Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?

2011-08-25T10:22:00.004-05:00

With the obligatory channeling of Dean Martin behind me, I want to talk to y’all about a potential Kickstarter campaign for OVA. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, Kickstarter allows creators to raise money to fund their projects. Fans pledge varied amounts of money, with higher pledges netting them increasing rewards, benefits, and goodies. If the total amount of pledges reaches a number set by the creator, the project is funded. If it falls short, no one pays a dime. It’s a low-risk way to support projects you care about without worrying if it will actually happen or not.

What I’m curious about is what sort of incentives will actually interest you enough to pledge. I’ve included a list below of ideas I had as additional bonuses to the basic “preorder the book” option. Which fill you with excitement and a prurient desire to part yourself from your money? Which instill only a tepid response?

A ranked list isn't required, but whatever time you can spend detailing your interest would be greatly appreciated. I want to gauge which of these are wanted most, and how much you would be willing to pledge to attain a given reward.

Under each item I have included a description and additional points of inquiry for discussion.

Early Access to the PDF
Self explanatory. How much earlier than its release date would you expect to see it? What would the least amount of time be to feel you’re getting something?

Signed Copy of the Book
Would personalized inscriptions increase your interest in this?

Trading Cards
Cards featuring art from the game. May also include quick reference for character stats or an extremely simple mini-game.

Limited Edition Box
A box including the book, quick-start player books, character sheets, and a set of dice.

Art Prints
Frame-able prints of artwork from the game. What size would you want to see most? Or would you like to see it poster-sized?

Wall Scroll
Artwork from the game printed on a wall scroll just like the ones you see for commercial anime.

Character Figure
A painted mini sculpture of one of the OVA characters, similar to ones common for most anime. Which character would you most want to see given this treatment?

Personalized Character Pin-Up
An illustration of your OVA character as part of a custom-designed character sheet.

Lifetime Wise Turtle Subscription
Free access to all future Wise Turtle products. Includes PDF and print versions. FOREVAH.

So? What do you think?

Come as QR

2011-08-22T18:40:00.007-05:00

You’ve probably seen them somewhere, bizarre blocks of pixels that appear something between Conway’s Life and a Rorschach ink blot. These QR Codes actually encapsulate small bits of data encoded into their zebraic patterns of white and black. A two-dimensional barcode. While originally created in Japan — isn't everything these days? — to manage part numbers in factories, QR codes are now used for all kinds of things. The one here contains a URL link to this blog. Not strictly the most useful of applications since you are presumably already here...

The Japanese have been scanning and using these things with their futuristic cell phones for years, but then Japanese cell phones have always been a little ahead of the curve. I still remember nights spent watching Serial Experiments Lain and thinking how out-of-this-world text-messaging seemed. Good ol’ Japan.

But now that the smart phone has become nearly as ubiquitous as the cellphone itself, the potential practicality of QR codes is hard to ignore. Print advertisements are taking advantage of its ability to link to websites and products, and the recently released Little Big Planet 2 can contain data for entire player-made levels in that pixel-parqueted patch.

But the QR code could hold great potential for tabletop gaming, too. Sure, there’s the obvious uses. Codes could link to the publisher website, to up-to-date errata documents, or even to printable character sheets. But take it a step further. Table-side apps to handle character sheets and dice rolls have become regular guests at gaming groups. But what if one of these apps could not only hold an entire character sheet, but could scan another player’s? A quick wave of the iPhone and a Game Master could have up-to-date data on the entire party. While browsing the latest Monster Manual, when that Game Master sees a beastie they like, zip, a quick scan and all the essential stats are imported. Players could perform complicate dice rolls and calculations by scanning a specific location on the character sheet.

As these things tend to be, it’d be an obscure novelty at first. But in the future, we could really see true integrative gaming, with the old and the new shaking barcoded hands. Those QR codes kind of look like cool monsters anyway, right?

If you’re looking for a QR reader on your iPhone or iPod Touch, I recommend I-nigma. It’s the software that’s been featured on countless Japanese cellphones for years, and it shows they've had the practice. Of five apps I installed, it had the quickest response when presented a QR code, as well as a great set of sharing features. Tweet it, Facebook it, even recreate any code you've scanned for others to scan right off your device. If you prefer a Swiss army knife approach, RedLaser is a decent scanner of all kinds of barcodes and automatically compares prices online. Both are free.

OVA Chapter Preview

2011-08-09T22:05:00.015-05:00

It’s been quite a spell since I've had much in the way of news for OVA. Progress has been slow, but I'm happy to say things are finally moving along at a steady clip. We’ll see a 2011 release yet!

But I don’t want you to have to take my word for it. Just click here for a complete chapter from OVA Revised Edition.

Hopefully it’ll whet your appetite for what’s to come on this Wise Turtle Tuesday!

World Turtle Day

2011-05-23T00:58:00.000-05:00

Today is World Turtle Day. If anyone deserves a holiday, it’s certainly the turtle. They have quite the heavy burden on their shoulders. You know, carrying their homes around and all.

Joking aside, I can’t describe why it is I have such an affinity for turtles. Perhaps anything still around after 200 million years deserves a little bit of admiration. Maybe the ninja variety I mentioned in my last post has something to do with it. I could have inherited my mother's own fondness for them. Or perhaps I just empathize with a creature about as slow and methodical as I am. Whatever it is, I just find something absolutely magical about these venerable sages from the far reaches of prehistory, a species that has seen countless eras our planet has to offer and will doubtless see countless more. They just have a knowing look, don’t you think?

Thanks for sticking around, turtles, even if we don’t have things quite as figured out as you do.

Turtle Tuesday and Other Strangeness

2011-03-22T10:44:00.011-05:00

TURTLE TUESDAY
As a child of the 80s, I was a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This statement wouldn’t be a terribly unique one if not for how much of an understatement it was. I watched all the cartoon episodes, I had all the action figures [1] including the turtle van, I played all the video games and the board game. I even had Ninja Turtle stuffed animals. I noted the irony of a furry Michelangelo, but that didn’t stop it from being AWESOME.

But for every “Turtle Power!” I chanted then, part of me shakes my head now. That’s not to say the cartoon isn’t still a lot of fun in its own goofy, toy-advertising way [2] — nostalgia makes us all fools with rosy spectacles — but it’s not why I’m still a big Turtles fan. At least not all of why.

That’s because before there was a cartoon, there was a comic. It was a darker, more serious tale, featuring four ninja turtles yes, but willing to deviate from pure mutagen antics the concept begot for tackling, dare I say, human issues. For comparison, the first movie is a rough retelling of one of the beginning comic arcs.

I was just getting to be a teenager myself, able to crave more than pizza monsters, when my brother introduced me to a four volume set of the original Eastman and Laird stories [3] Already addicted to everything Turtles as it was, I was captivated by it. I read them thoroughly, multiple times even, before I started collecting individual issues on my own.

And then there was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. It was a Palladium game, first published years before the cartoon/action figure boom, and as such was steeped in the world of Eastman and Laird, not Playmates Toys.

It was notable for several things. Not only was it a licensed game, it was a licensed game with the involvement of the creators. Sure, panels from the comics were littered throughout, but there was plenty of new art, too. It made it feel more special, more real. It was like an actual extension of the story, and not just a cash-in license.

The rules themselves are cluttered, broken, and incomprehensible in the wonderful way all Palladium games are. It’s playable, sure, but it’s way more complicated and inconsistent than it needs to be. It’s harder to forgive newer releases — cough Robotech: Shadow Chronicles cough — but back in the 80s, most RPGs were like this. And where the randomized character creation could really prove frustrating for a game like, say, Heroes Unlimited, it really felt right for TMNT. Mutation was happenstance, and discovering the crazy animal you were going to be was part of the fun. The game’s BIO-E point system did allow you some customization, letting you place your mutant between "sentient animal" and "full-blown anthropomorph." It gave control to an otherwise chaotic character creation, and it was great.

But then came the cartoon. To gamers, the Turtles were no longer this cool indie comic but a silly kids show. Sales of the RPG plummeted and Palladium let the license lapse. It was survived by the mutant animal spinoff After the Bomb for some years, but support for it would wane too, as is the way with many RPGs. I can’t say I was the biggest fan of the Palladium rules, but I was of this game. But to blame the cartoon for much is silly and unfair. After all, without the cartoon, I may never have been a fan of this RPG, or of turtles wielding ninja weapons at all.

Cowabunga.

[1] Well, not all. Do you remember how many there were? Do I even need to say Space Cadet Raph? Really, do I?
[2] Perhaps you'd prefer Crazy Clownin' Mike?
[3] Ironically, the comic actually gives Crazy Clownin' Mike precedent.

GM's Day

2011-03-04T13:52:00.005-06:00

Today is GM’s Day. I'm always fond of this holiday — for much of the same reasons I'm fond of all things RPG, but the fact I designed the logo doesn’t hurt. It’s among the favorites I've ever done.

It’s also — entirely coincidentally — the third anniversary of Gary Gygax’s passing from this realm. I don’t have as many or as storied memories of his work as some of my role-playing fellows, but I do still remember a certain Dungeon Master’s Guide. Frayed about the edges, its interior cluttered and haphazard for sure, but that book was just filled with so much wonder. Its delightfully diffuse vernacular was both esoteric and amiable in a way that can only be called Gygaxian. I miss books like that.

Domo Arigato Turtle Roboto

2011-02-22T12:10:00.009-06:00

TURTLE TUESDAY If there’s two things that define Japan, it’s a love of technology and a love of cute things. Unsurprisingly, stuff like this happens:

The Takara Walkie Bits actually came out five years ago, marketed in a variety of candy-colors and packaged in adorable candy tins. Seeing that wasn’t enough, Takara went on to expand to many other varieties, including a “Nature” line that mimicked real species of turtle. The robots themselves are limited to various modes of walking and chirping — and a painful rendition of Mozart's “Toy Symphony” — but that's all they really need to do. Charming, adorable, and worth every penny.

Originally these tiny turtles fetched around $12. Now that they’re out of print — a crime! — a $30+ price tag is more likely to prevail. Even so, I finally broke down and ordered one, and he arrived just in time for Turtle Tuesday. Here’s his debut!

Aw.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-15T10:46:00.006-06:00

TURTLE TUESDAY
He's a day late, but you won't hold that against him, will you?

This fellow comes courtesy of Meaghan Smith, who is not only a talented singer but has a site full of her artistic endeavors, including tons of wonderful pieces like this one.

The Winter of the Cherished Storyteller

2011-02-09T00:00:00.000-06:00

I remember school book fairs with fondness, with the warm but distant feelings many things from childhood are bestowed. It’s a nostalgic sort of praise that is more than many actual memories should warrant, and so it was with these scholastic events. There were books, sure, but of the childish kind that schools expected their students to read and not the daring tales of high adventure that I had grown so fond of. If there were aliens, they were silly and green. If there were wizards, they had pointy hats and magic wands. But there were plenty of useless knickknacks to spend my book fair allowance on — like little sports cars books from which I could memorize top speeds and accelerations — so all was well. Well, except when those managing the fair's sales insisted on stamping my books. The practice of permanently inking blue bears on my precious purchases never sat well with me.

But when I reached middle school, the book fair grew up a little with me. There were honest-to-goodness novels here, and that was a treat. I eagerly scanned the shelves, scouring for a world to explore. And then I came across it. Redwall by Brian Jacques.

At first blush, it would seem a step back, a story peopled not with fantasy heroes but talking mice and other rodentia. It was more of the trite kid-stories I had long sidestepped.

But it wasn’t. The book had the weight of a novel, and small black-and-white illustrations of swords and daring-do tantalized the interior with the promise of adventure. And the cover itself! Not a Disney-esque illustration, but blackletters and paneled pictures conveying the magic of an old medieval manuscript, all surrounded by a vivid teal. It’s sequel, Mossflower, was there too, and soon they both were mine.

I started reading right away, cramming its chapters of unlikely mouse heroes and legendary swords between classes, pondering its rhyming riddles with wonder. The prose was flavorful but succinct, conveying sumptuous feasts and ancient red walls with clarity and musicality. I'd sing with the heroic ballads, laugh at garrulous hares and quarrelsome shrews, and cry when the good guys fell to the wicked. I’d go on to read a lot of tales from Redwall.

Just as I was discovering Redwall on paper, I had just gotten my first Internet account and with it access to the World Wide Web. It was still, as I was, a young place, brimming with new ideas and really horrendous websites. There were so many places to go. And go I went, seeking even more of the Redwall world I had come to love.

There was an official webpage, which held my interest for a time, but what really grabbed my attention were the many unofficial Redwall clubs. There was at least several score of them, all ostensibly unique in their own way but ultimately the same at their core. You submitted a character to join and in turn were given missions to accept. These missions were really story prompts, and you completed them by doing just that, writing a story. Completing missions earned you medals and the prestige of promotion through a ladder of ranks.

It was a wonderfully simple idea, a concept that embraced storytelling for its own sake while giving the kind of instant gratification kids desire. Of course, most of these clubs were run by kids themselves, and of the many I joined, most petered out quite quickly. But in that time I was a ne'er-do-well in a pirate ship's crew, an unruly dibbun against bedtime, a vermin of a villainous entourage second-guessing his ways, and a loyal defender of Castle Alelea. I even started my own club, Redwall 3000, its calling card a sci-fi spin on Jacques' world. This was the awesomest idea ever at the time, but I can only laugh now at how dreadful it would be to Brian Jacques himself.

Of these clubs, Castle Alelea was one of the oldest and quite possibly the best. The site existed as a real locale, teeming with rooms to explore as you followed one underlined link to the next. At each turn your eyes were greeted with hand-drawn art and your ears treated with strains of music. It was a pretty special place, its magic something that many clubs, including my own, would try to capture.

That site was the handiwork of Kelly Hamilton. She would eventually become one of the first friends I made through a world connected by 1s and 0s, and many years later would help shape the look of OVA.

But before there was even the first keystrokes of OVA, Redwall would inspire my first serious attempt at writing an RPG. It was a bit of a mess, cobbling my favorite elements from Champions, Fuzion, and Rolemaster, but it was never-the-less complete. And even if it were horrifically inappropriate for Redwall, I learned a lot from making that game. What worked, what very much didn't, and how to let go of hard-wrought rules for the bettering of the game. Discarding the original Rolemaster-esque critical hit tables for a single simpler, more open one was tough. But I knew I did right, and while the game was still a train wreck, it was a wee bit less of one.

I would keep reading Redwall, but as the years went on, my blind wonder waned. I became disenchanted with Redwall's quaint halls and its minute inhabitants. Each would-be conquest of the red-stoned abbey began to stretch credulity, the resolutely black-and-white, good versus evil stories that once attracted me started to feel shallow, and every new book felt more the same than it did different. Eventually I stopped reading them altogether. It’s too bad since many of the following books explored times before Redwall, and I always felt the other Redwall-less books like Mossflower and Martin the Warrior were Jacques at his best. But even without his work over the last decade, I'll never forget all the ways his stories touched me, how his prose helped shape my own writing voice, and the way loving his world would form my earliest memories of making websites, RPGs, and friends.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Jacques. Thanks for believing a clumsy mouse in flip-flops could one day wield a sword and be a hero.

DiTurtleizzi

2011-02-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

TURTLE TUESDAY

I used to love AD&D. But more than that, I really loved Monster Manuals. Almost every RPG has its collection of things to toss at players, but Dungeons & Dragons’ just seemed so expansive, a kitchen-sink of every neat (and occasionally not so neat) idea, a treasure trove of mythic creatures cobbled from countless mythos, including that of Dungeons & Dragons itself. The Zaratan pictured above claims to hail from Al-Qadim, one of many campaign settings of TSR’s heyday, but it has obvious inspiration from the mythic World Turtle. You may have come across a version of that story from the famous Steven Hawking anecdote “Turtles All the Way Down.”

But as fascinating as each volume of the monstrous menagerie was, the part that really captured my imagination was the art of Tony DiTerlizzi. Whereas much of the art of the 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual was functional, and at times barely serviceable, DiTerlizzi's art breathed on the page, the soft colors and wispy inks conveying each creature as more than a stat block. When I got my hands on the Monstrous Compendium Annual Vol. 1, I was ecstatic to find every denizen within the paperback tome was penned by his hand. It was more than great art. DiTerlizzi was a revelation and a lesson. RPGs could be beautiful.

DiTerlizzi continued work for the Monstrous Compendiums, and even defined the look of entire worlds as the face of Planescape, another AD&D campaign setting. But he’s long since moved on, his dabbling in RPG illustration likely a scarcely remembered stepping stone on the way to his true passion in children’s books. [1] But no matter how many of his new stories become a part of modern childhoods, I’ll always love him for the books that were a part of mine.

[1] Serendipity abounds. Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi actually met while she was interviewing him for, of all things, an RPG magazine.

The Digital Game Board

2011-01-28T00:00:00.013-06:00

Early on in the iPad’s life, there was a game released called Scrabble. You may have heard of it. In addition to its expected lexicographic features was the ability to use iPhones and iPods as letter racks. A comic was made about this fact.

There’s a kneejerk reflex to appeal to irony when discussing board games remade into video games, but the iPad might be the strongest case yet for doing so. Much of the appeal of board games is the fiddly bits — the tokens, pawns, and pieces that make board games what they are. When you bring a computer or a game console into the picture, it invariably brings about a disconnect. A controller divides you from the game's components. Even with all the Wiimotes, Moves, and Kinects being touted this recent holiday, each promising more immersion than ever before, there's still a real and tangible distance between you and the screen. Even the DS requires a stylus for practical playing.

The iPad is different. It’s physical. The large screen feels like a game board, with pieces that can be touched and slid around like checkers. Holochess it’s not, but it is a pleasant, intuitive experience, one with the advantages of both a real game and those of a computer. I think we can agree that having the game check the rules and score the moves for you is a good thing, and there’s no fighting over who has to return over-cramped components back to the box.

Classic games, the kind everyone has tucked away as part of a 5-in-one box and buried in the cavernous reaches of some closet or another, are a dime a dozen in the Apple App Store. Many Parker Bros. mainstays, like the aforementioned Scrabble, appear courtesy of EA, too. But as it is for other genres, the App Store is a robust habitat for indie board games, the sort with the designer’s name on the box and maybe a wooden person or two.

Mana HD is one of those. Created by French designer Claude Leroy, it’s a capture-your-opponent's-pieces game with a complexity somewhere between Checkers and Chess.

Each player gets six pieces: a daimyo, the game’s king that you must protect, and 5 ronin, pawns to protect the daimyo. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese history will see a problem here, what with ronin being masterless samurai. But we’re talking about an abstract board game, so I guess holding it to a historical standard is unfair. It’s not like bishops rushed to the defense of their kings, either.

I digress. In short, the goal of the game is to capture your opponent’s daimyo while preventing the same.

Both players get to place their pieces within the closest two rows, but the red player always goes first and gets to rotate the board as seen fit. Whether this really provides any tactical advantage is up for debate, but there is a vague difference in the distribution of the game's three squares.

These squares form the crux of what makes the game unique. Instead of all pieces behaving the same way, as in checkers, or each uniquely, as in chess, the way your pieces move depends on two outside factors. The first is the space they rest on. Each square has anywhere from one to three hatch-marks on it. These marks equate to the number of spaces that piece can move — in a horizontal or vertical direction, never diagonally or passing over the same space twice.

The second factor is the eponymous mana, and it's even more interesting. Once the red player moves a piece, that piece gets the mana. What does this mean? The black player may only move pieces that rest on a square with the same number of hatch-marks as that of the piece with mana. In turn, that black piece gets mana, and the red player is faced with the same limitation of choices. If ever the situation arises that a player has no pieces that match, they can move any one as they please or replace a fallen ronin.

While enticing your opponent into making certain moves is a mainstay of these sorts of games, the ability to actually decide which pieces are at the other player's disposal adds a layer of strategy that's novel and fun.

The presentation itself suits the elegant nature of the game, with graphics and sounds that are simple but beautifully evocative. The whole game hits those sort of notes. In a way, it’s much like the iPad itself.

Nom Nom Nom!

2011-01-25T02:00:00.000-06:00

TURTLE TUESDAY

If there’s one website you must visit, it has to be this one.

TurtlesEatingThings.com doesn’t update often — the backlog isn't very extensive either — but it’s worth every chelonian chomp while it lasts.

Thinking Inside the Box

2011-01-21T02:00:00.001-06:00

The role-playing game has changed a lot in the past decades. It’s had its waxes and wanes in popularity, its trends in game design, and more than a few really funny looking dice along the way. But if you were to look at the industry from the outside — as someone who barely knew what an RPG was, much less concerned with the evolution of rules and design — one of the single most obvious changes is the abandonment of the boxed game.

That’s not to say there aren’t boxed games anymore. Wizards of the Coast’s new homage to the iconic Red Box can attest to that much. Nor am I saying that heavy hardbound tomes weren’t around ages ago, what with Gary Gygax’s approach for the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. But at the same time, game makers’ expectation of who their gamers are has drastically changed. A game's largest body of fans are the same grognards that have been buying RPGs for decades, a group that has little need for yet another set of dice.

It’s an expectation that makes sense. It doesn’t hurt that RPG fans host a disproportionately large gathering of bibliophiles that appreciate the beauty in a well-designed book. Abandoning the box allows a greater attention to creating such things and trims the fat out of a gaming collection.

Yet there just is something downright magical about a box. It’s more than a vessel for carrying contents; it’s a promise of the unknown. Beneath its cardboard exterior lay all the materials you need to embark on countless adventures — and probably a few things you don’t. But even if the back features a itemized list of every last punch-out token that hides inside, there’s still some glorious sense of surprise when you lift the lid off for the first time.

Boxes are inclusive. Modern rulebooks tend to be the domain of the Game Master, or a requisite purchase for all Players to invest in and make use of to create the awesomest hero. But when you whip out the box, there’s everything everyone needs. Hand over the introductory rulebook, pass out the character sheets! It makes trying a new RPG as easy as popping open Monopoly.

I think that feeling of open invitation is a grand factor in why board games are doing so well now. Even if there’s a high price sticker stuck to the front, there’s comfort in the idea you can just buy just that one thing and be ready to roll right out of the box. It doesn’t make the assumption you’ve played an RPG before, or that you have fellow geeks to explain it to you. It’s a gate all by itself, with a view of the world beyond and a set of keys hung neatly to its side, waiting for you and whoever else you want to bring along to unlock it.

And I think that’s a mistake much of the RPG industry is making. Despite being an entirely social activity, RPGs have become more and more a private place. The gate has been replaced with iron doors and the activities beyond like a clandestine secret society, their charter an endless collection of rules, addendum, and errata. There are players out there who don’t even know they love RPGs — the expansive realm of freeform message board role-plays are proof enough of that. I think our little niche of the world could be a slightly bigger one if we didn’t always wave around 10 pound books and instead proffered a little promise, sealed away in a box.